June 17, 2014

Keep The Champagne Corked

However, this will not last. For an explanation why, we can turn to probably the most brilliant jihadist strategist to have touched a keyboard: Abu Musab al-Suri. He believed that “open fronts,” such as the 1980s jihad against the Soviet Union, efforts intended to liberate and hold territory, are unlikely to succeed. The simple fact is that they cannot stand up to modern military power backed up by modern intelligence. Instead, he recommended a turn toward individual jihad because it avoided the enemies’ strengths. In other words, Al-Suri would say that the more cities ISIS captures, the more money it has to keep track of, the more armored vehicles it acquires, the more social services it has to organize and deliver, the more it is setting itself up for a fall.

Examples are offered:

Afghanistan and Somalia provide evidence of the fundamental truth of the observation that al-Suri and Mobley make. Only a small push from the U.S.-led coalition was necessary to send the Taliban regime running in 2001. In Somalia, al-Shabaab and before it the Islamic Courts Union, have had tremendous difficulties holding on to power in the face of attacks from local opponents and the Ethiopian and Kenyan militaries, and occasional American raids.

I have one word: Hezbollah. They have been running southern Lebanon for decades and have withstood challenges from the very well organized Israeli military.

As to which modern military might challenge ISIS, my guess had been Iran: in a bid to broaden their appeal in the Muslim word beyond Shiites they might seek an alliance with local Sunni chieftans unhappy with ISIS, leading to Awakening II. Just whether that would be good news for the US remains a puzzle.

MORE: Citing al-Shabaab was bad luck, since they made headlines again today:

48 Killed in Terror Attack on Kenya Town, Police Say

Al-Shabab, a Somali al-Qaida-linked group, claimed responsibility for the hours-long assault on Mpeketoni in which 48 people were killed. The attack began Sunday night as residents watched World Cup matches on TV and lasted until early Monday, with little resistance from Kenya's security forces.

Obviously, that story does not contradict the notion that Al-Shabab has had trouble holding and governing territory. But they are not on the run, either.

GLASS HALF FULL: The NY Times mismatches headline and story in this guest piece by Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute:

Who Will Win in Iraq?

ISIS Will Fail in Iraq, and Iran Will Be the Victor

However, ISIS will "fail" in that they will not take Baghdad, which is now overwhelmingly Shiite. Whether the leaders of ISIS would consider his projected endgame a failure is far from obvious:

In short, despite the rapid success of the Sunni campaign, it is a kamikaze attack that will make the Shiite hold on the Iraqi state stronger, not weaker.

That said, it’s unlikely that Mr. Maliki will have the stomach to retake the Sunni-majority areas of western Iraq anytime soon. The rump Iraq, like the Assad regime in Syria, will be ever more in thrall to Iran, and committed to domestic policies that make the reconstitution of the country via a political process ever more unlikely.

So Mailiki continues to govern Shiite Iraq and ISIS keeps Sunni Iraq. That sounds like a defeat ISIS can live with; as to whether Obama would be willing to go on national television and declare that to be an ISIS defeat, well, that would really be a job for Susan Rice.

OT: My father-in-law is turning 90 years old this August. He's a WW2 veteran, from Patton's army. He's been a lifetime resident of NJ. And is the founding father of a fire department. I'm throwing him a surprise birthday party and would love it if the Govenor showed up to wish him a happy birthday. Anyone have any idea the best way to go about trying to make this happen?

I worked for a telecom firm that used Lotus notes and had mailbox limits that I ran afoul of continuously. I also had some managers that liked to claim that the reports our office were producing on demand were not what they asked for. I regularly downloaded the email account to cds to make sure I had backup of all traffic between my offices and the managers claiming they weren't getting what they asked for.

I'm OCD so almost all report requests were usually a stream of emails with questions like "you requested data for 'sales' and that is ambiguous."

Could you specify a product category, time frame, sales persons, customers etc you are interested in so that we may produce what you need?

Keeping those emails was Butt covering 101. As they would claim it took our office too long to produce reports, but the reality was provable that we were producing what they asked for and not what they actually required which was discovered after questioning the report requesters.

Matter of fact, I haven't worked there since the telecom layoff of 2001, but copies of those cds are still in a box in my bedroom closet. Not only did I have one set of backups, I had two.

The 'computer ate my emails' only works if you are intentionally trying to NOT cover your ass. Most people don't work by leaving their ass exposed.

My experience has been that most people are either lazy or incompetent or both. The concept of backing up emails or even valuable source code never crosses their puny minds. If there isn't a prescribed "corporate" mandate, doesn't happen.

Now Lerner on the other hand appears to be much too devious and underhanded to be incompetent. Lazy maybe.

The concept of backing up emails or even valuable source code never crosses their puny minds. If there isn't a prescribed "corporate" mandate, doesn't happen.

I agree, but business e-mail (and nowadays most personal e-mail too) is always server based, and is never dependent on individuals backing stuff up. Again, in the case of the IRS that is a legal requirement, and I suspect it effectively is for most businesses for compliance purposes.

Buckeye -- I heard a horror story from a MAJOR project at my employer, a project with over a million a month burn rate. Most of the developers were making changes to the code in-place, then copying what they remembered changing to their local machines to be committed to version control. Needless to say they had endless quality control problems and old errors reappearing in the system.

Paula, I don't know, but NK's suggestion of asking the Mayor to contact the Governor's office sounds like a good start.

You might ask your House Rep and state senators/reps to contact the Governor's office as well. They might all be Dem, but they might also all be raring to show public support for veterans in this current political environment. Veterans' issues are a true bipartisan concern, as well they should be.

And with D-Day ceremonies and veterans visiting DC memorials fresh on everyone's mind, it is good timing for your FIL. Good luck and keep us posted. I hope he has a marvelous birthday!

Seems to me whenever I have thought a legal problem might be brewing for my business the first thing my lawyers did was to take possession of all of my files, paper and electronic. When the storm failed to materialize, back they would come.

It must be pointed out, though, that there is plenty of offensive rhetoric which flows in the opposite direction. In fact, for those who support the conjugal understanding of marriage, the attacks have not stopped at rhetoric. Simply for taking a stand for marriage as it has been understood in every human society for millennia, people have lost their jobs, lost their livelihoods, and have suffered other types of retribution, including physical violence.

Me: So the idea is to rest it?
Her: Yes
Me: So . . . would repeated jarring of my hand while holding a cylindrical object be discouraged?
Her: Um, yes.
Me: I mean, like if I play pool. I play a lot of pool. I sometimes play 10-12 hours at a time.
Her: Oh, no, you shouldn't do that.
Me: I'll take that under advisement.
Her: So you mean you won't stop.
Me: Shhhh, don't tell my doctor.

2) Then, she talked about diet...

Her: You should avoid protein-dense meats and seafood.
Me: I'm sorry, for a second there I thought you said don't eat meat.
Her: You should cut back on red meat and seafood for sure.
Me: I'm not sure I'm following you. Meat. Seafood. You want me to eat less meat? And seafood?
Her: I think it would help, yes.
Me: I've done something to make you mad at me, haven't I?

3) Next up, as several suggested here....

Her: And it's probably a good idea to cut down on alcohol intake.
Me: ::spit take:: Why do you hate me? How much are we talking about here?
Her: Well, best would be to eliminate it at least while we are working to get the swelling down.
Me: I don't like that answer.
Her: Well, cut down as much as you can.
Me: ...
Her: ...
Me: Look, I've thought it over and I've made a decision. Cut it off.
Her: Oh no, I don't think we have to do that. With the treatment we've outlined, I think the swelling will go down and we'll be able to get your ring off no problem
Me: No, you don't understand. The finger. Just cut off the finger. It's really become way too much trouble and I don't want to deal with it any more.
Her: ...
Me: Or do I have to see a specialist to have that done?
Her: ...
Me: Because we could do this right now if you're the person for it.
Her: ...
Me: I'll follow you on twitter, like you on Facebook. I'll give you a really good review on Yelp if you do it right now.
Her: I'm calling mrs hit and run.
Me: Shoot, you don't have to do that, I can drive myself home. Just give me a local and let's get this show on the road.

In a fluid situation like this, the supposed experts should go buy and drink a big case of STFU. Odds are good that whatever opinion they express will come back to bite them in the backside.

I mean, look at Slow Joe Biden who declared that Iraq was a shining accomplishment of the Obama Administration. But Slow Joe usually gets a pass for whatever idiocy spews from his mouth, so he'll survive that gaffe.

Comanche-- yep. And i have to see any of these experts point out what Matt did. This is the Sunni-Shia showdown. The Saudis had enough of Obummer kowtowing to the Mullahs and the MB-- the House of Saud's 2 greatest enemies. So they are paying ISIS to cause lots of trouble for Obummer and the Mullahs, and the MB Turkish government. The USA must stay out-- Obummer has created a mess we can do little about until after lots of Arab blood is spilt.

The Internal Revenue Service is about to get slapped with a harsh payback for messing around with conservative groups, blowing wads of tax dollars on employee conferences and helping implement Obamacare.

The House Appropriations Committee is set to OK an IRS budget of $10.9 billion, $1.5 billion under President Obama's request for fiscal year 2015, reducing the agency's budget to 2008 levels.

Budgets in Washington DC never go down. In Washington speak its a "cut" when the budget increases too slowly! This is a very real cut and might actually modify some behavior over there. Notice I used the word might, as it could take several years running of applications of this medicine to get the message across.

LOL@ the Christie jokes. NK, thank you
for the advice. I just got off the phone with the mayor's office, they're going to see who has the closet ties to the governor and ask them to ask him. They admitted it's a long shot, but you never know. It's worth a shot. In the meanwhile they said the town could recognize him with a special award. :)

25 years or so ago, DrF did a post doc at a government lab in a country of legendary efficiency, and several experiences caused him to call bullshit on the efficiency thing. One such incident was the Tobi incident. Tobi was a systems operator, and one day he took the disk platters for the RM05 drive and put them on the drive and mounted it. At which point the drive started to make what tech people refer to by the technical term "the radial-arm-saw noise." So what did Tobi do? He removed the platters and took the backup platters -- the only other copy of the data on the disk -- and mounted that on the drive.

Yep...

Now I know that 97% of all computer scientists agree that the IRS is lying about the missing emails, but I'm actually in the 3% that says that yes, the IRS IT dept could be incompetent enough that they were not backing up emails. There are Tobi's everywhere...

No idea what thread this belongs in - apologies to any topic-purity OCD types.

In the LUN - prepared remarks from IRS Commissioner Koskinen had to say to The National Press Club on April 2, 2014.

He said the following about the IRS budget(my bold):
*********
Since Fiscal 2010, IRS appropriations have been cut by about $900 million and we have 10,000 fewer employees even as our responsibilities continue to expand.

We recognize the need to become more efficient, no matter what happens to our funding level. Since 2010, the IRS has cut annual spending on professional and technical service contracts by $200 million. We generated $60 million in annual printing and postage savings by eliminating the printing and mailing of certain tax packages and publications, and by transitioning to paperless employee pay statements.

Real estate is another area where we have found major savings. In 2012 the IRS began a sweeping space-reduction initiative that is projected to reduce rent costs by more than $40 million and reduce total IRS office space by more than 1.3 million square feet by the end of this fiscal year. Taken together, we’re spending $300 million a year less in these areas.
******************

I think that means they easily reduced their spending by MORE than $900MM/year. 10K fewer employees might have done that all by itself.

I say, let's cut it even more. They clearly have lots of low-hanging fruit.

Was there an IRS in 1908? This IRS history implies no; check out the rates from income tax 1913 origination to WWI debt repayment and 'stabilization'. Leviathan has been in the making for 100years; it is insatiable:http://www.irs.gov/uac/Brief-History-of-IRS

PS: at minimum Christie should issue a signing Proclamation noting your F-I-L's contribution to fire safety and community spirit. I helped our local politicians get that out of the Ct Governor recognizing the foundation my wife formed for breast cancer awareness and early detection.

While you are doing Hail Mary invites, why don't you call Ft Dix and ask the Commander to come by to greet a Patton vet? I would call the Command Sergeant Major who is the Commanders top enlisted man and make the request. You never know, the Colonel could be thrilled to meet a WW 2 vet.

I can tell you that Ft Benning has several old school vets that volunteer at the museum, and when Tmax was in OCS, he was genuinely thrilled to listen to tales of WW 2 vets.

hit, not to get too personal, but do you happen to have psoriasis? The sausage fingers are a leading sign of psoriatic arthritis. Most people with PSA start out with plain old skin psoriasis, and move on the the arthritis later, but some people start with the PSA.

The fact that your finger has been doing this for so long without either getting better or killing you would tend to indicate something like an autoimmune disease.

“It’s harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq -– all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering -– all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations.”

We used to rotate who was on backup duty between 3 of us in an IT department of 60. I'm big on procedure manuals with checkoff lists to make sure you do everything and document having done so. (Another CYA move)

Well, anyways, left work one day after all the afternoon procedures got smashed as some idiot landscaper hit a gas line in the intersection and the building had to be evacuated. Along about 10:55 that night I bolted right off the couch, grabbed the keys and flew out the front door. Maniac driving to the office 32 miles away and swipe my key card, enter the building and run to change the backup tapes for the nightly run. Made it with 3 minutes to spare.

Then I realized I was in a really Victoria's Secret nightgown and all the security cameras in my path to the server room had recorded my flight to backup.

EEEEK. I don't have access to the security camera tapes.

The next morning as everyone was panicking that someone had entered the building after the evacuation and boy were they in trouble...and yep someone had accessed the security tapes to take a look and sure nuff there I was.

And no I wasn't in trouble as the El Paso facility had screwed up something and so we didn't have to reconstruct two days of posting instead of one thanks to my midnight dash.

That tape made the company video and picture montage at both the summer party AND the Christmas party.

And yes, I changed the tape backup procedure to a first thing in the morning and NOT last thing before you leave at night procedure.

Yeah, Stephanie, one time I was running standalone backup to defrag my drive (does anyone here even know what that is?) and I forgot to put the "image" flag on the command line when I made the backup. So then I went and restored the last weekly backup, and the daily incrementals. At which point found out that the night operator (who worked midnight-to-seven) had been consistently coming in at 2am-3am and so didn't have time to run backups, and I only had 2 of the 5 incrementals.

Paula, Send an invitation with a nice letter directly to the governor. Forget middle man and use the personal touch. In the letter explain about your dad and how much it would mean to him and to you. At the very least you should get a reply, if not a personal appearance.

Cathyf, yep. Data reconstruction is a bitch. Which is why dailies are imperative and weeklies are imperative and monthlies are imperative. All separate and all stored in different locations and all maintained through at least your next proctoscope by the external auditors.

And don't even get me started about reloading backup files to retrieve something in monthly post adjustments that no one noticed didn't get posted as was claimed until weeks later... ruins many days.

Welp, I guess today is report on what happened when you saw the doctor yesterday day. Mrs H was bugging me to get a physical which I knew I was overdue on doing, but not by a lot. Anyway I went yesterday and other than the doctor hearing a small heart murmur everything was ok. So they ran an EKG before I left and the output said that I had had a heart attack at some point in the past. I said "say what?" and the doc said it could be what they call a silent heart attack and ordered some other tests to be done in the future to see what is what.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised given my family's history but it still rocked me on my heels. The only time I can think this may have happened was when I was in Amarillo I woke up one night just feeling completely claustrophobic panicky and out of sorts in the middle of the night. It wasn't a bad dream or a work related panic attack or anything like that; I even went outside to walk around to try and calm down. After a couple hours I finally felt ok to go back to bed. That's the only thing that may have been it. So we'll see what happens.

I hesitated writing this until now because I don't like writing that kind of stuff here because I don't want people feeling sorry for me or concern over some pixel person most of you haven't met in person. It was only because hit was writing his stupid finger stories that I decided to one up him.

As always, in the choice between incompetent and malevolent, I opt for "both." In a sense the "incompetent" part may save us, not because he occasionally gets things right (no evidence of that), but that he screws up trying to implement horrible policies.

CH, while that's never a good thing to hear, I'll just mention that my father had such a report probably 20 years ago or more. He's now 92 and his heart is still pumping away (albeit with a very recently installed pacemaker, but that was just to address a low heart rate).

Paula - Ask the current fire chief to get the state fire marshal to ask the governor's staff - then have the firefighters' union (or professional association) have their statewide head follow-up with a request to the governor's staff.

I got off lucky on the doctor visit - just a full eye exam for me today.

My vision has gotten worse in the three years (yes, I know) since the last time I went, and my new prescription for glasses is much stronger than the already strong one I've got.

I was quite stupid, though. They had the disposable sunglasses at the check-out desk of the doctor (they dilated my pupils), and I forgot to take a pair, so when I got outside...well, I'm just glad I didn't accidentally wander out into traffic or something on my way back to the Metro station.

I was reading through some Airedale rescue available dogs today and ran across this description: I hope you don’t have a postman that comes to your door. I will go nuts and throw all the pillows off the sofa and do my best to let him know he is the enemy.

Maggie was the only Airedale I've had that didn't go nuts at the mailman. Emma wore grooves in the hardwood floor doing these weird little spinning moves in front of the window closest to the mailbox. Trane would just growl and bark although a couple times he was with me in the back yard when the postman unwisely decided to deliver the mail in person; fortunately Trane would listen to me when I saw him about to attack. Throwing pillows off the sofa is a new one, though.

Including:
Please provide a timeline of the crash and documentation covering when it was first discovered and by whom; when, how and by whom it was learned that materials were lost; the official documentation reporting the crash and federal data loss; documentation reflecting all attempts to recover the materials; and the remediation records documenting the fix. This material should include the names of all officials and technicians involved, as well as all internal communications about the matter.Please provide all documents and emails that refer to the crash from the time that it happened through the IRS’ disclosure to Congress Friday that it had occurred.Please provide the documents that show the computer crash and lost data were appropriately reported to the required entities including any contractor servicing the IRS. If the incident was not reported, please explain why.Please provide a list summarizing what other data was irretrievably lost in the computer crash. If the loss involved any personal data, was the loss disclosed to those impacted? If not, why?Please provide documentation reflecting any security analyses done to assess the impact of the crash and lost materials. If such analyses were not performed, why not?Please provide documentation showing the steps taken to recover the material, and the names of all technicians who attempted the recovery.Please explain why redundancies required for federal systems were either not used or were not effective in restoring the lost materials, and provide documentation showing how this shortfall has been remediated.Please provide any documents reflecting an investigation into how the crash resulted in the irretrievable loss of federal data and what factors were found to be responsible for the existence of this situation.I would also ask for those who discovered and reported the crash to testify under oath, as well as any officials who reported the materials as having been irretrievably lost.

Sandy@4:22-- fine list. I would break out that 'explain' question to demand IRS produce the agency's protocols and procedures to comply with federal record keeping statutes and regulations and demand if Lerners/six others email records were ever retrieved previously in response to any judicial subpoena, and the dates the emails were retrieved.

CH, my dad had the same thing on his first EKg at 55 ish; he's 83.
It happens--sometimes seems like a bout of flu. Your spell may be have been it.

Do what all my smart partners do--keep active, take fish oil, avoid processed carbs. If your doctor tells you differently, do your own reading. Wheat Belly is an excellent, up to date book by a cardiologist.
Sadly, it takes about 20 years before any of this stuff gets to be mainstream advice, with studies to back it.

Atkisson's questions are those a litigator would pose in a request for the production of documents. I assume Cleta Mitchell will propound something very similar. If the responses are as I suspect, they will provide unmistakable evidence os serious criminal misconduct.

Thanks again, all; even GMax. My doc gave me the green light on playing hoops with the standard caveats. Mrs H isn't happy about that; I probably told her one time too many that to go out like Hank Gathers did would be the best exit possible.

- was originally designed to be a completely self-contained operation for DoS, with singles, couples and families assigned and living inside the walls. Included a building (Northeast corner) that was/WAS originally planned as an elementary school. (true)
- the plans were developed years earlier and pulled down off a shelf with changes made on the fly.
- no US company would bid on the contract owing to security and other demands & requirements. Eventually a 'sh---y' company, "First Kuwaiti" got the contract for the compound with an initial price of ~USD $750M.
- First Kuwaiti cut a lot of corners in the building of the buildings. THe buildings really are ugly, and are painted merde brown, appropriate for the DoS because everything DoS touches, particularly in Iraq, turns to merde. (e.g., First Kuwaiti cut a lot of corners, for instance used 18 gauge wire in areas, like the kitchens, where 10 gauge wire was required. Fires were started from the overload. Plumbing had similar issues. Etcetera).
- Repairs and refits (eg: converting single apartments to doubles), additional hardening (to protect from Indirect Fire (IDF) and expansion put the total costs for the facility according to informed observation and estimation at over USD $2B.
- you will not see the USD $2B figure anywhere, because the dollars come from different accounts, initial new construction, enhancements, security, maintenance, etc etc. It is all dirty accounting, but typical government work.

The size of the embassy is primarily a function of the DoS personnel to Support personnel ratio, in the military this is referred to as "Tooth to Tail." If there are say, 500 DoS employees (Americans and TCNs--third country nationals; yes it is true, the DoS hires administrative staff around the world and then moves them from country to country, so you might be int he US Embassy in Baghdad or Amman, but be 'assisted' by a Kenyan or whomever).

With a staff to support ration of say five to one, with an embassy of 500, you need 2500 staff, these include everything from electricians and plumbers to gardeners to they Morale Welfare and Rec coordinator, hell the bar tended, the cashier at the jiffy market. It goes one and on.
So, you can see how the number quickly gets to 3000, and but imaginative accounting, that number can grow. Similar to how to pay for the compound, it depends on who is asking what question.

Sometimes the embassy population can be listed as quite high, this is particularly useful when asking for additional funding for to be able to perform Embassy functions better. Or, Embassy personnel can be a low number for different reasons (How many DoS Americans are in Baghdad? this is an example of a carefully crafted question to make the number look low.)

Then there is the security, if and when someone from DoS goes outside the gate, there are the direct security personnel, plus all of the personnel to make sure the security personnel are GTG, the mechanics, the armorers, the comms guys, the guys who push the button to let you through a door, after other guys check your badge, make sure your pockets are empty and that you have taken off your belt and shoes.

Then too are all of the food prep personnel, and the cooks and garbage men.

On and on and on.

~~~

Then there is the OSC-I, Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq, which was the implementing arm of the military-to-military engagement. I am hearing that these personnel were among the first that have been sent home, but am awaiting additional information. A good buddy of mine who went to Iraq in 04 (MARINE Mustange, retired) is in Cyprus tonight but RTB (Returns to Baghdad) tomorrow, and will give me a dump on the latest.

Coulda / Woulda / Shoulda. Hope this helps.

BTW - I think THIS is an excellent answer for both Iraq and for the Whitehouse. Nobody accuse me of being John Paul Vann, please. But the idea has merit. For the Whitehouse, it is the only option, I've come to believe.

~~~~~~~

Oh, I forgot Landing Zone (LZ) Fernandez, where the DoS maintains Baghdad-based portion of its helicopter squadron; mechanics, pilots, base support, fuels personnel, comms personnel and all of the personnel to support those personnel. LZ Fernandez only cost a modest $100M-$200M...